Voices of indigenous leaders from across Indian country will be heard in Denver the day prior to the first presidential debate to educate the public and challenge the candidates on issues affecting Native voters, including the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Oglala Sioux Tribe Vice President Tom Poor Bear is widely known as the first person to prompt President Obama to speak publicly about Keystone XL at an event in Denver a year ago this month.

Immediately following, Native leaders will join Renewable Rider Tom Weis in delivering, via“rocket trike,” an Open Letter to Denver Obama and Romney campaign offices calling on both candidates to withdraw their support for Keystone XL.

September 27, 2012 (Boulder, CO) – Today, Tom Weis and allies released an “Open Letter” calling on President Obama and Governor Romney to withdraw their support for Keystone XL on economic, public health and national security grounds. Inaddition to affected ranchers, farmers and indigenous leaders, signatories include Lester Brown, Daryl Hannah, James Hansen, Mariel Hemingway, Bill McKibben, Bonnie Raitt, Ed Begley, Jr. and race car driver Leilani Münter. Tomorrow, Weis begins a 4-week “rocket trike” tour of the eastern plains and Front Range of Colorado, where he will hand-deliver copies of the letter to Romney and Obama campaign offices."The southern and northern webs of the Keystone XL pipeline represent the extraction and trafficking of dirty, toxic, carbon-intense synthetic crude oil that from cradle-to-grave is a weapon of mass destruction against Mother Earth,” said Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director, Indigenous Environmental Network. “President Obama and Governor Romney have an opportunity to show they are men of conscience by withdrawing their support for this project.""Political leaders are pretending they do not understand the implication of science that has become crystal clear: burning unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands will hand a climate system to our children that is out of their control,” said Dr. James Hansen, one of the world’s top climate scientists. “Keystone XL is the exact wrong direction for our country,” said Lester Brown, President, Earth Policy Institute. “America’s economic path to prosperity lies in a wartime-like mobilization to ramp up our abundant domestic wind, solar and geothermal resources, not in facilitating dangerous tar sands exploitation.” He noted that Colorado is ranked 5th in the nation for solar resources and 12th for wind.“As a race car driver, my career is currently based around an internal combustion engine, and yet even I can see the importance of moving towards the use of clean, renewable energy from the sun, the wind, and the ocean,” said Leilani Münter. “Keystone XL is the wrong choice for America, instead let's be leaders and put our country to work building a new green energy economy.”Citing public health threats posed by Keystone XL, lifelong conservationist Mariel Hemingway, granddaughter of celebrated author Ernest Hemingway, called on both candidates to withdraw their support for the tar sands pipeline, saying, “Foreign corporate interests must not be permitted to violate our basic rights to clean air, food and water.”Pointing out the threats to America’s heartland, where agriculture and tourism are major employers, actress/activist Daryl Hannah said, “It is time for all Americans to demand that our political leaders be brave, and be leaders, and do what is right for the people and the earth. Defending America against Keystone XL is not a Democratic or a Republican issue. It’s about doing what is right."“Fairness is a bedrock American value,” said Tom Weis, President, Climate Crisis Solutions. “I believe when the American people hear how our fellow Americans are being abused in Texas, they will demand an end to this madness. We need Keystone stopped, not Keystone Cops.”Last fall, Weis pedaled the 1,700-mile proposed pipeline route from Canada to Texas, meeting many of the landowners currently resisting TransCanada. The 2012 tour will begin at NCAR in Boulder and end at NREL in Golden. The “Open Letter”is available for anyone to sign.

As candidates for president, you both support construction of the southern (OK-TX) leg of Keystone XL, a pipeline that would transport tar sands through the Great Plains from Montana to refineries in Texas.We call on you to withdraw your support for this project in light of the overwhelming evidence, available to both of you, that Keystone XL threatens America’s economy, public health, and national security.You both know about the poor safety record of Canadian pipeline companies and the economic danger Keystone XL poses to our nation’s food and water supplies. TransCanada’s Keystone I tar sands pipeline, built two years ago, leaked corrosive tar sands slurry 12 times in its first 12 months. In 2010, a similar pipeline run by another Canadian company spilled more than 1 million gallons of toxic tar sands into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, sickening hundreds of people, displacing homeowners, wrecking businesses, and destroying jobs. Keystone XL – which would pump tar sands at extreme pressure and temperature across nearly 2,000 U.S. waterways – promises more of the same by allowing for leaks of up to 1.7 million gallons daily without triggering a real-time leak detection system. It is not a matter of if, but when, TransCanada’s 1,700-mile tar sands pipeline will compromise America’s breadbasket by contaminating our Great Plains rivers and aquifers.You have been informed by twenty prominent scientists – including one of the nation’s top climate experts, Dr. James Hansen – that Keystone XL “would practically guarantee extensive exploitation” of Canada’s tar sands, which “on top of conventional fossil fuels will leave our children and grandchildren a climate system with consequences that are out of their control.” You have also been warned by Dr. Hansen – who along with other scientists links deadly heat waves to climate change – that such exploitation would mean ”game over for the climate.” As far back as 2007, an elite Military Advisory Board of 11 retired three- and four-star generals and admirals from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps concluded that “climate change is and must be recognized as a threat to our national security.”Echoing this sentiment, Vice Admiral Lee Gunn, USN (Ret.), president of the bipartisan American Security Project, testified in 2009 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that taking this national security threat “head on is about preserving our way of life.”Rural families living in the path of the proposed pipeline are sounding the alarm of impending disaster. Please listen. You need to both stop hiding behind the few thousand temporary construction jobs this project would create and level with the American people. The facts show that Keystone XL:

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